Nautilus: Secure Computer Telephony

• Platform: DOS, Linux, SunOS, Solaris.
• Description: Nautilus is software which allows two users to hold a secure conversation with either over ordinary phone lines or over a computer network. Nautilus uses your computer's audio hardware to digitize and play back your speech using speech compression algorithms built into the program. It encrypts the compressed speech using your choice of the Blowfish, Triple DES, or IDEA block ciphers, and transmits the encrypted packets over the internet or your modem to another computer. At the other end, the process is reversed. Nautilus operates in half duplex mode like a speakerphone -- only one person can talk at a time. Either user can hit a key to switch between talking and listening. Audio quality ranges from fair to very good depending on which of the four speech coders is selected. The Nautilus WWW page provides more detailed information.
• Requirements: Nautilus runs on IBM PC-compatible computers (386DX25 or faster) under MSDOS or Linux as well as audio-capable Sun workstations running SunOS or Solaris. The MSDOS version of Nautilus requires a Soundblaster compatible sound card and currently only runs over ordinary phone lines with a modem. To use Nautilus over ordinary telephone lines, a modem capable of connecting at 4800 bps or faster is required.
• Availability: Nautilus is available in three different formats. As a DOS executable, it is available as an archive in zip format along with it's associated documentation. In source format, it is available as either a zip-ed archive, or a gzip-compressed tar archive.
  Nautilus is distributed freely (subject to US export restrictions) with full source code. This insures that its security can be independently examined and verified. Follow the instructions in the following README files to obtain Nautilus.
  • ftp://ftp.csn.org/mpj/README
  • ftp://ripem.msu.edu/pub/crypt/README
• More information: WWW: http://www.lila.com/nautilus/
• Contacts: The Nautilus development team includes Bill Dorsey, Paul Rubin, Andy Fingerhut, Paul Kronenwetter, Bill Soley, and Pat Mullarky. To contact the developers, send email to nautilus@lila.com.

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